System-Level Technology Conversations Shift To Deployment


While much has been achieved to define a system-level design flow, more is still needed. Technology goals vary depending on the perspective of tool providers in terms of what needs to be done to realize the promise of a streamlined tool flow from TLM 2.0 down to GDS II. To many, 2011 will be an interesting year in the system-level design space as conversations with customers have shifted. �... » read more

Experts At The Table: IP Integration Hurdles


By Ed Sperling Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss IP integration issues with Ken Brock, senior staff product marketing manager for logic libraries in Synopsys’ Solutions Group; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at Atrenta; and Jim McCanny, CEO of Altos Design Automation. What follows are excerpts of that conversati... » read more

The Rising Stake In Software Tools


By Ed Sperling The growing importance of software and off-the-shelf IP in semiconductor design is beginning to change the dynamics of the entire EDA tools business, setting off a string of acquisitions as the largest players realign themselves to take advantage of this shift. The most recent example: Mentor Graphics’ acquisition this week of CodeSourcery, a GNU-based Linux toolchain and s... » read more

The Deafening Problem Of High-Speed I/O


By Ann Steffora Mutschler The performance of digital systems today is limited by the interconnection bandwidth between chips, boards, and cabinets. This has driven I/O speeds up into the gigabytes. While this boosts performance, it also opens the door to a host of new problems within the chip, board and system. Add low-power requirements to the mix and it is a recipe for huge headaches. One... » read more

3D Stacked Die Create Unique Test Issues


By Ann Steffora Mutschler While 3D die stacking promises a number of benefits including smaller footprint, faster speed, lower power and possibly lower cost, testing those devices isn’t going to be simple. There are varying degrees of challenges aligned with varying types of defects that occur throughout the process, from wafer fabrication to package assembly to system-level assembly. And... » read more

Experts At The Table: IP Integration Hurdles


By Ed Sperling Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss IP integration issues with Ken Brock, senior staff product marketing manager for logic libraries in Synopsys’ Solutions Group; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at Atrenta; and Jim McCanny, CEO of Altos Design Automation. What follows are excerpts of that conversatio... » read more

The Trouble With Semiconductor IP


Low-Power Engineering takes a poll of the big problem with IP and how to solve it from Ken Brock, senior staff product marketing manager at Synopsys; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at Atrenta, and Jim McCanny, CEO of Altos Design. [youtube vid=b7wnkY_rU04] » read more

Silence Is Golden


As the industry continues to march along building devices with ever-increasing battery life, it is necessary to migrate to the latest and greatest process nodes, which as we all know are smaller and use lower voltages. However, any noise in the system—whether it was there before or you start to use something like USB 3.0 or SATA or something else—is actually going to increase the number of ... » read more

Building Up In 3D


By Ed Sperling Stacked die are expected to begin showing up in volume in late 2012 and in 2013, turning what has been a science experiment into a mainstream way of designing and manufacturing SoCs. This magnitude of this shift cannot be overstated, and clearly all of the pieces are not in place to make it all happen immediately. There also are significant technology challenges to overcome, ... » read more

Verifying At The System Level


By Ed Sperling Verification has always been the problem child of SoC design. It requires the most engineering resources, the largest block of time and the biggest budget in the design process. And at each new process node the problem gets bigger, in part because there is more stuff on each die—transistors, memory, interconnects, I/O, functionality—and in part because chipmakers are being c... » read more

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